Bari was silent.
He knew flaws were never random. They were not chains cast to cripple, but restrictions meant to sharpen, to teach. A flawless thing was perfect, yes—but perfection was sterile. Perfection could never change. Could never improve. And anything that could not grow was no different from being dead.
He remembered his tutor's words, spoken once when Nephis asked why flaws existed at all:
"Being flawed is the essence of life, my Lord and Lady. It is also the essence of growth. After all—what is life, if not the endless struggle to grow and improve?"
So when Bari looked upon his flaw, he did not see a curse. No. He saw a mirror—one that reflected not weakness, but his own nature.
Flaw: [Oath Keeper]
Description: [You cannot break a promise, written or spoken.]
Eight simple words. Yet they struck with the weight of destiny.
His whole life—his six short years—had already been bound by promises. And now, so would the rest.
[Wake up, Will−Born!]
The black void convulsed, spun, and disappeared.
***
Bari opened his eyes, not to a bed of silk or the warmth of a chamber, but to the cold iron ceiling of a containment cell. He was strapped into a bed as though it were made to restrain a monster—perhaps that was the intent.
He blinked, disoriented. And then he saw him.
His tutor. Dax. The man who was more shadow than servant, a Master of the highest caliber—and the sworn bodyguard and tutor of Bari and Nephis.
His frame was draped in a heavy mantle of fur, the pelts cascading across his shoulders like the trophies of countless winters endured. Beneath, his chest was guarded by a deep blue tunic, richly patterned yet tempered by battle-worn leather straps that bound it close. Gilded clasps and engraved buckles gleamed faintly, not ostentatious, but marked with the weight of lineage and service.
The man's presence filled the chamber more than the cold stone walls ever could. His face was carved by years and battle, strong-jawed and weathered, his expression stern but not without a quiet pride. A dark beard, touched with the first strokes of grey, lent him the dignity of age without softening the edge of his bearing.
When his green eyes fell upon Bari, they shone like tempered steel—sharp, discerning, and unyielding. The gaze of a man who had killed and would kill again if the need arose, but who had also sworn his strength to the boy's survival.
He was no tutor dressed for ceremony. No courtly butler preening in embroidered robes. He was a warrior—one who had seen the cost of oaths, one who had buried men for failing them, and who would die before letting Bari and Nephis fall.
"Ahh. You're awake. Thank the dead Gods—I feared I might have lost an apprentice."
Then his smile faltered. Their eyes locked, and a more serious expression settled across his face.
"Those are quite the eyes, young master. Truly breathtaking. I would guess they are tied to your Aspect?"
Bari was still in a daze, staring around the room as though it were the strangest thing he had ever seen—which, truthfully, was not far off. His sight had changed. His perception sharpened to an almost unbearable clarity. Dust drifted through the air—not soft motes shimmering in sunlight, but each particle laid bare in stark detail, every edge and contour sharp as if a stone were suspended inches from his face.
But that wasn't what startled him. It was what his eyes were telling him.
The amount of information pouring into his mind was unbearable. Every blink split the world open. He could see the inner structures of the bed beneath him, the flow of pressure in the leather straps, the microscopic weave of the fabric that clung to his skin. He could trace the rhythm of his own pulse, the subtle contractions of muscle, even the faint shimmer of essence flowing through his veins. It wasn't just sight—it was comprehension. His vision unravelled things into their smallest truths, exposing the lattice of reality down to the sub-atomic level.
Objects, people, the room itself—none of it appeared as simple surfaces anymore. They were maps of information, pulsing with detail. Every flicker of motion, every pattern of blood-flow, every tremor of energy was laid bare before him, whether he wanted it or not. His eyes had turned his brain into a supercomputer, processing data at a speed he could barely keep up with. In that moment, comprehension was a curse.
"Young master?"
Dax's voice cut through the flood like a blade, grounding him.
"Yeah..."
Bari exhaled, forcing himself to focus. "It has to do with my Aspect." He raised an eyebrow, his reflection still lingering in his mind's eye. "I'm guessing you can already tell—there are physical changes?"
"Yes." Dax leaned closer, loosening the restraints. "They are quite the sight. But before we discuss that, let's get you out of this."
The leather bindings gave way under his hands.
Bari could see every tendon flex as Dax moved, each fiber of muscle tightening and relaxing in slow, intricate motion. He could even hear it—no, see it—the subtle acceleration of blood coursing through Dax's veins as his heartbeat shifted with effort. Time itself seemed fractured, dragging each moment into unbearable clarity, as if the world played in slow motion.
He clenched his jaw tight and forced his perception back into pace, willing himself into the rhythm of normalcy. The world snapped back into motion—but only because he commanded it.
Dax continued unaware of his disciples trouble's. "It came as a shock to us all when you didn't wake after falling asleep. At first, we couldn't believe you had been chosen by the Nightmare Spell so early. Matter of fact, you set a new record—the youngest to ever be pulled in. Beat the old one by seven years. That's older than you are."
He punctuated the words with a pat to Bari's head, the leather of his glove brushing against the boy's hair.
"Many doubted you. I did not. No student of mine will die in their first Nightmare."
Bari swung his legs over the side of the bed, his small frame a quiet reminder of his youth.
"How long… until the Winter Solstice?" he asked, already calculating how much time he had before the Dream Realm claimed him.
His eyes were not the only thing that had changed. His mind—once quick, now relentless—was being force-fed information at an astronomical rate. Every glance flooded him with detail: the tension in Dax's jaw, the slight dip in temperature near the chamber's walls, the faint vibration of footsteps echoing far beyond the door. It was not just seeing; it was processing, categorizing, and interpreting, his thoughts racing with the precision of a machine.
Patterns leapt out at him unbidden—angles, measurements, the rhythm of heartbeats, the subtle decay of sound as it diffused through stone. His perception did not stop at sight; it tore the world apart into raw data, then stitched it back together in an instant. His brain felt less like a boy's and more like an engine, a living supercomputer built to dissect reality itself.
It was hard to think—not because he lacked the ability, but because thought itself was constantly interrupted. It was like trying to hold a single conversation while a thousand voices clamored over one another, all demanding his attention at once.
It wasn't something he could simply turn off.
Yes, he could bend his perception, forcing the world to crawl or blur back into motion, but it was like holding a breath forever—unnatural, suffocating, unsustainable.
And even then, it didn't stop the deeper violation. His eyes whispered secrets he never asked for, exposing the bones of the world, the pulse of its hidden veins, the fragile threads holding everything together.
He didn't see; he endured.
The knowledge bled into him, passive yet inescapable, until he wondered whether he would ever close his eyes and truly sleep again—or whether he would dream only in unbearable clarity.
"I'll tell you later. For now—" Dax's face twisted in mock disgust, "—you need a bath. You've not washed in days, and you smell like a corpse."
***
As Bari stepped into the bathroom, the scent of soap and steam clung faintly to the air, but it was not the room that stole his breath. It was the mirror.
At first glance, nothing seemed wrong. His father's raven-black hair remained, streaked starkly with the pale, cold-white tips of his mother's bloodline. His features had sharpened in subtle but undeniable ways, the soft edges of childhood erased as though cut away with a blade. The nightmare had not simply scarred him—it had carved him, purging fragility and leaving behind something raw, refined, and sharpened.
But it was his eyes that rooted him in place.
They were no longer the faint crimson glow of an awakened child. Now, they burned—blood-red, layered in concentric rings that pulsed like ripples across still water. The light in them did not shine outward but instead drew all things inward, dragging the gaze toward a gravity impossible to resist. To look into them was to stare into a spiral of ruin and revelation, a promise of clarity that could flay flesh from soul.
These were not eyes that merely saw. They pierced. They dismantled. They rewrote. Beneath their scrutiny, illusion had no refuge; truth had no veil.
For Dax or for anyone who might dare meet that gaze—there could be no mistaking it. These were not the eyes of a boy. They were the eyes of a predator. Of an oath-bound godling. Of something teetering on the edge between miracle and monstrosity.
It was not only his gaze that had changed. His presence itself felt alien. His frame was still slight, his shoulders narrow, but there was a tension beneath his skin now, like coiled steel sheathed in silk. The mirror showed a boy, yes—but the boy who stared back carried the stillness of something far older, far more dangerous.
Bari raised a hand and pressed it against the glass. His crimson irises followed the motion, sharp and unblinking, unwavering as though daring the reflection to move on its own. For a moment, he did not recognize the figure staring back. The stranger in the mirror was him. And yet… not him.
Bari summoned his runes and once again looked at his Aspect description.
Aspect Abilities: [Insight]
Aspect Ability Description: [You possess a divine perception. You are able to see inside objects—muscles, blood, and essence nodes. You instinctively understand the weaknesses, strengths, and structures of all things your eyes lay upon. You perceive essence flow within living beings, constructs, weapons, and even the Dream Realm itself. You can identify the names of attributes, aspects, memories, and echoes of an opponent at a mere glimpse.]
The words were simple, yet they did not prepare him for the reality.
The first taste of it came in the shower, a place many relaxed and enjoyed themselves. The moment he turned the valve, water hissed and burst from the nozzle. It should have been ordinary—heat against skin, steam rising in the air. But for him, there was no such thing as ordinary anymore.
The droplets fell in slow motion. No—worse. They did not simply fall. Each droplet shattered into a thousand reflections as it curved through the air, prisms refracting light, bending it, multiplying it. His eyes captured every fragment, every angle, feeding the information to his mind without pause, without mercy.
He saw inside the droplets. Tiny spheres of shifting surface tension, vibrating with kinetic energy. The molecules themselves danced before him, hydrogen bonds flickering in and out of stability, billions of tiny movements feeding into his skull all at once. His brain screamed with comprehension he had not asked for, whispering the nature of the water, the heat exchange of steam, the way pressure bent the droplets' fall. It was agony.
He pressed his hands to his eyes, but darkness offered no reprieve. His eyelids and hands might as well have been glass; the flood of perception did not stop. He could still see—through the curtain, through the tiles, through himself. Muscles tightening beneath his skin. Blood pumping faster with his panic. The thundering of his own heartbeat, not in his chest but as a visual map of rushing crimson rivers. Every nerve sparked like a thread of lightning, and he knew their paths as instinctively as he knew how to breathe.
For a moment, Bari swayed, nausea crawling up his throat.
Was this what the world was now? An endless storm of knowledge, every secret of reality unwillingly revealed? Would he ever see it as others did—whole, simple, mercifully dull?
He forced himself under the stream. Droplets hammered against his face, each one a mirror, each one exploding into unbearable detail. He saw himself multiplied a thousand times in their curved skins—his eyes staring back, alien and crimson, spirals of ruin looking out from every reflected angle. He was inescapable.
He wanted to scream.
Instead, he clenched his jaw and endured. Slowly, agonizingly, he wrestled his perception back into focus, forcing his vision into the illusion of pace and rhythm. The droplets no longer froze; they fell again. His heartbeat slowed. His thoughts ceased spiralling long enough for him to breathe.
But when he looked down at his hands, he knew the truth.
The world had changed forever.
No—he had.
And there would be no going back.